Experimental measurement of the bullet trajectory after perforation of a chambered window

Abstract The assessment of the failure and final response for glass structures loaded by high‐speed events such as blast or projectile loading are challenging tasks for researchers. For many studies, knowledge about the strain rate effect in brittle materials and well described finite element simulations are not enough to reach a correct outcome. For that reason, only experimental assessments can give credible results. Moreover, the impacting glass fragments or projectiles often change the angle of the trajectory after perforation of a target. In this study, the authors present the change in the 3000 J military bullet trajectory after total penetration of a two‐chambered civil engineering facade window. A series of actual tests were performed for different angles of the soda‐lime float glass specimen that were subjected to bullet impact. The results obtained chambered windows given an understanding of the behavior of the separate glass surfaces under such complex scenarios. Furthermore, the presented tests support the designers and military shooters by the assessment methodology of projectile bullet trajectory change as a function of the incident angle.